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I think we all have understood that you don't trust this test, so please... let us techie geeks just compare the test results to see what (maybe not completely accurate) technology, sampling length etc. lies behind the different models, and you can discuss the (never heard it but I trust you) great sounding quality of CP-1 and others at another thread. I would of course then join you there, without even mentioning this thread...

Pardon me? I'm not stopping you geeks from comparing test results.

If you can question my motives for trusting the word of respected professional people, it shouldn't bother you if I question the integrity of a test that can have errors, bias, or both.

Just skip my posts if you don't like them. Start another thread if you feel like it.

The next big deal is going to be a proper comparison between the CP1 and 5...on the face of it the 5 appears to offer better value.

Cheers,

Steve

Hi Steve,

I will post my impression as soon as possible.

I'm more interested in the CP-1 for it's acoustic piano, and equally as much, the Rhodes emulations.

I play an old Fender Rhodes at church, and it's action is very uneven and the whole instrument itself needs a lot of work, new hammer tips, and perhaps an overhaul of the action.

I don't need organ sounds, as I have a Hammond A-100, so the wooden ungraded action of the CP-1 will be perfect for my style, plus I can adjust the sounds to my liking.

The Rhodes I'm presently playing is too bell-like in the top octaves, and is using the old style tone-bars, so being able to adjust with the CP-1 will be nice; also the DX Electric piano will be very nice for slow pieces.

I think they will probably bring in CP-5's when available.

If the CP-1 doesn't quite meet my conditions, I'm also going to look at the RD-series with the added Supernatural piano card.

finally I've made it to record my KAWAI CA-63 (sound is also identical to KAWAI CA-93).

Thanks very much for the file kawaian!

This DP has nice things going for it. I couldn't see much in the way of stretching, and couldn't hear it at all as it was only on some of the upper notes.

Layer blending is also very well done.

Looping and sample length are about par for the course, and note decay is a bit fast, though there is some quantization noise in the sample that keeps me from hearing everything going on near the noise floor (most likely introduced during the DPBSD recording process, and probably not something the DP itself is doing).

That's interesting Dewster as I think I remember that Kawai claims to use 88 note sampling on the CA-63 and CA-93. How clear is the stretching from your analysis?

I wasn't aware of their claim, but here is the spectral view of what I'm calling the 2,4,2 stretch groups on the CA-63:

The 2 group on the right might or might not be a real one, but the 2 group on the left and 4 group in the middle look pretty definite. I will say in my defense that it gets very difficult to see or hear these things on the upper end of the keyboard. I could be entirely wrong, but that's what it looks like to me. It isn't audible (to me).

They are a mass-produced consumer product with less than revolutionary technology made by a huge Japanese conglomerate out of perhaps a hundred dollars of plastic and silicon.

The only scarcity that matters is the scarcity of people willing and able to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars for a digital stage piano that is most noteworthy to date for its ho hum trade show demos, team cheers on forums, slick marketing brochures and a massive dim-able product logo on the back. Yee hah!

dewster, yes the CA93/CA63 utilise 88-key sampling (as do all other KAWAI DPs released since the ES6).

I too would be interested to see your spectral analysis of the top notes from a purely modelled source (V-Piano, Pianoteq). Perhaps note stretching would still be visible (as in your CA63 analysis), despite the fact that this is obviously not the case.

They are a mass-produced consumer product with less than revolutionary technology made by a huge Japanese conglomerate out of perhaps a hundred dollars of plastic and silicon.

The only scarcity that matters is the scarcity of people willing and able to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars for a digital stage piano that is most noteworthy to date for its ho hum trade show demos, team cheers on forums, slick marketing brochures and a massive dim-able product logo on the back. Yee hah!

@dewster, maybe you could put a disclaimer on the first post of this thread, explaining the purpose (and the limits!) of these tests?

Like you, I've been disclaimering my ass off throughout this entire thread. I was seriously considering writing a script or something that would automatically insert IMO at the end of every one of my sentences. But implementing Operation Ignore changed all that.

the mosquito Noise might be due to the fact that I did an MP3 compression two Times which is not really a good thing to do. I recorded the sample directly on a USB stick using the internal Recording functionality of the DP. Unfortunately wav Recording was not possible, it always led to jumps and crackles in the Recording (another flaw of CA-63). So I imported the MP3 into audacity and normalized the file since it was quite low volume and then recompressed it.

Interesting that there is no obvious resonace... This was activated and clearly audible. Maybe when playing something through external MIDI still deactivates any resonance effects? Okay, another flaw! There are plenty of (rather small) defects that should be resolved in future Firmware releases. The Recording function is very sluggish and regurlaly freezed the DP so that I needed to reset the DP... Need to talk to KAWAI James soon!

I was seriously considering the CP1 until I found out the massive dim-able product logo on the back only has three levels of illumination. At that price-point I expect at least four levels. Yamaha blew it right there IMO.

Sorry if this has been addressed earlier (didn't feel like looking through all 9 pages) and I'm a bit late to the party here, but has anyone (dewster) compared a raw wav to the corresponding mp3 to make sure that the encoding itself isn't introducing artifacts that are then being measured. I would think for this to really be useful, everyone would use raw wav's thereby eliminating the quality of the encoding codec if this is to be something truly scientific or analytic.

Like I said, if this has already been addressed just point me to the post(s) and I'll shut up

I was seriously considering the CP1 until I found out the massive dim-able product logo on the back only has three levels of illumination. At that price-point I expect at least four levels. Yamaha blew it right there IMO.

dewster, yes the CA93/CA63 utilise 88-key sampling (as do all other KAWAI DPs released since the ES6).

I too would be interested to see your spectral analysis of the top notes from a purely modelled source (V-Piano, Pianoteq). Perhaps note stretching would still be visible (as in your CA63 analysis), despite the fact that this is obviously not the case.

I don't think a modeled piano would be the best point of comparison. The modeling algorithm may have step points or look-up tables, the result of which could mimic the spectral "finger printing" of sample stretching. Better to use a 100% guaranteed unstretched real piano sample instead.

When I see very little note stretching in a DP, particularly when it is confined to the upper end of the keyboard, my inclination is to believe that the actual piano itself had some less-than-perfect sounding notes, and stretching in that case to remove them is more of a blessing than a curse. This is of course pure conjecture on my part, but it does make a certain amount of sense.

I was seriously considering the CP1 until I found out the massive dim-able product logo on the back only has three levels of illumination. At that price-point I expect at least four levels. Yamaha blew it right there IMO.

That was sarcasm, BTW. Guess I should have used a smiley or something. It's getting so you have to explain even feeble attempts at humor to death around here.

Dewster: Please consider expanding your test to include repitition rates of the actions. To do this properly I guess you'd need a pretty sophisticated device that could strike the keys with a variable rate. (and probably variable velocity and variable strike depth as well)

One thing I'm interested in is whether any high end pianos WITHOUT triple-sensors can outperform something like a Casio PX-130, which is very low cost, but yet does have a triple-sensor action, for example.

...has anyone (dewster) compared a raw wav to the corresponding mp3 to make sure that the encoding itself isn't introducing artifacts that are then being measured...

Good point.

If this where a purely listening test I'd say it does not matter. But seeing as the test is analytic, it might.

For example does the MP3 encoding process preserve phase information at all frequencies? Is amplitude quantitization uniform across all frequencies? MP3 is designed to preserve only what the human ears would notice and remove the rest.